Editor’s note: What follows is the Letter to the Editor Carolyn Peterson intended for print in the Daily Mining Gazette. We accidentally ran a previous letter earlier this week.

To the editor:

The long wait for election results has given us time to ponder and to prepare for whatever happens next. What a blessing. Each of us has a choice to make – whether to be afraid and angry or to be brave and kind.

Rutger Bregman has a brand-new book entitled “Humankind”, in which his basic premise is that cooperation, not competition, has made humans so successful. He suggests that our tendency to be kind to each other has allowed us to form diverse communities to solve problems.

Bregman also writes that we are uniquely curious about our environment and are quick to learn from each other. He cites research that shows that a dog and a chimpanzee will, when a human points to something in the distance, will focus on the pointing finger, whereas even a baby will look towards the distant object. The internet has allowed us to share good ideas instantly.

The concern Bregman has currently is that people are choosing to tune into sources of information that are undermining our trust. News has always been negative, and now that we can wallow in scary stories 24 hours a day, we must make an effort to “feed the good wolf” that resides in us.

Bregman’s book gives multiple examples of stories that fed our potential distrust of each other. Many of us had to read William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” in high school. This was a piece of dystopic fiction that misled us to think that children left to their own devices will construct a mean and violent society in which the strong bully the weak. Bregman spent years trying to find a real case in which kids marooned on an island managed to survive. He found one in the South Pacific – boys who ran away from school, stole a boat and then were shipwrecked. They not only survived, they thrived. Right away they figured out how to handle disagreements by sending those who were arguing to different ends of the island until they were ready to reconcile with each other.

We are fortunate to live in a politically diverse community that gives us opportunities every day to be curious and kind to each other, especially those whose politics are different from our own. I hope and pray that the calm mood that I feel right now will lead to an era of cooperation and generosity.